


The Axe

by redkay



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Christmas fic, Idiots in Love, M/M, top ten dumbest things i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:12:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redkay/pseuds/redkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you have an axe?”  Ian asks.</p><p>“On me?”   Mickey clarifies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Axe

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the end of season three in an alternative universe where Terry never caught the boys and nothing bad happened ever.

“Do you have an axe?” Ian asks.

“On me?” Mickey clarifies.

Ian starts to roll his eyes then changes tact in the middle to survey Mickey, just in case.

“Iggy might. Whose balls you need to chop off?”

“No—uh, just some guy, fucked with Fi.” Ian’s eyes dart around suspiciously; it’s his plotting face. Which happens to be synonymous with his _I have a very stupid fucking idea face_. “You wanna come?”

Mickey shrugs. “Not like you could wield an axe on your own. Probably lose a toe.”

Ian mutters something about gunshots and asses that Mickey generously chooses not to hear.

As it turns out, Iggy not only has an axe, he has an entire collection to choose from.

“Er, the sharpest one?” Ian says when Iggy unveils the weapon rack proudly. There’s no heat in the Milkovich house; Ian’s bouncing from foot to foot, bundled up in layers and layers of secondhand clothes. Mickey’s just got his old, worn hoodie; he pulls the sleeves over his fingers and tries to stifle his shivering.

“This one’s got a leather grip, see?” Iggy says, brandishing the axe. “Got it from ol’ Joseph down the street.”

There are still some flecks of ol’ Joe’s blood on the blade. In case there was any doubt left, Iggy adds, “Cuts straight through bone. Best I’ve come across.”

“Thanks,” Ian says, and unsubtly tugs his glove back on before grasping the handle. “I’ll bring it back good as new.”

“Who do you need to kill?” Iggy asks conversationally. 

“Just some guy, messed with his sister.” 

“A rapist? Cause you promised I could come along on the next one.”

“Jesus, no, not a rapist. We gotta go, you stay here and fix this shithole.” Mickey gestures at the closet, with bats and guns cluttering the floor. At least half of them should have been dumped already, but the Milkoviches aren’t known for efficiency in anything other than violence. Clean-up has never been their strong suit.

“I thought Joe moved to Michigan,” Ian muses while Mickey fumbles for the truck keys. It’s fucking freezing already and his fingers are numb.

“He didn’t.”

“Mm. You know his brother’s queer?”

“Jesus, did you fuck him too?” He finally manages to fit the keys into the ignition and they’re blasted with cold air. 

Ian laughs, but doesn’t answer, which just makes Mickey pound the dash harder. “Finally got the air conditioning working then.”

It shuts off at last, but Mickey is suddenly acutely aware of the last time they were in this car together. Or the second to last; the last they were careening down city streets while Mickey bled out onto the seats.

“Where are we going?” he asks gruffly, avoiding Ian’s eye.

Apparently the perv who messed with Fiona is loaded, because Ian directs him well into the North Side, into neighborhoods where even the sight of his truck would send families fleeing back inside their picket fences.

“You want to kill this guy or see if you can move into his house?”

“Huh? Oh, right. Yeah.”

Ian’s a shit liar when it comes down to it, and Mickey is starting to smell something off about this story. 

Mickey’s only talked to Fiona Gallagher a couple times, but she always made an impression. When he was in third grade, Lip called Iggy stupid and Iggy broke his nose. Fiona had come storming across the playground that afternoon and threatened to cut off both their dicks and feed them to them if they ever messed with one of her brothers again. 

Iggy’s been in love with her ever since; Mickey’s been appropriately wary.

Point is, if some over privileged asshole tried to fuck with Fiona Gallagher, the only use Ian would find for an axe would be to chop up the guy’s corpse into small enough pieces that no one would ever find them.

Ian’s fingers tap out a nervous pattern on handle of the axe, his gazed fixed out the window. Mickey’s hands tighten around the wheel.

“Pull over here,” Ian says, when all the light has gone and they’re running low on gas. 

He gets out of the car, axe in hand, and after a moment Mickey follows.

Glancing around the neighborhood, Mickey notes that it’s almost identical to the one Ned lived in. Ian has a type, that’s for sure. Rich, married assholes. He wonders idly what this one did to piss him off, why they’re going after him with a bloodstained weapon.

“You left the key in the ignition,” Ian notes, handing the axe over so he can hop the fence to the backyard.

“Might need a quick escape. ‘Sides, you really think someone in this neighborhood is gonna steal it?”

Ian lands with an _oomph._ “Never know, maybe they want to trade their jag in for a broke-down piece of shit.”

Mickey tosses the axe over the fence; Ian makes a distinctly un-manly noise as he jumps out of the way. Grinning, Mickey hoists himself over and lands directly in the line of Ian’s scowl. 

“Could’ve beheaded me, asshole.”

“Don’t be retarded, the angle was all wrong. Nicked an ear, maybe.”

With a huff, Ian storms towards the house. 

Or not a house, really. Mansion would be more accurate. Mickey creeps closer to peer into a window. Expensive taste. After they’re done killing whoever fucked with Gallagher, he might have to steal some of that shit. 

“Looks like no one’s home,” he whisper-shouts to Ian, who’s lurking behind him in the yard. “Could sneak in, ambush the guy when he gets back.”

No answer. 

“Don’t be a bitch, the thing missed you by like a foot. Come on, help me pry open a window.”

Mickey edges closer, cursing when his pants get caught on a thorn. 

_Thwack_

Mickey jumps and twists around, searching for Ian.

Who is standing about ten feet away, trying to yank the axe out from where it’s currently embedded in a tree trunk.

“It’s not a gun, you don’t have to fucking test it,” Mickey says. Ian just avoids his eye. “Whatever,” Mickey mutters, turning his attention back to the house.

Whoever lives here must have kids, judging by the train tracks running around their living room. Fuck Gallagher and his weird married men kink anyway. His fingers itch for the axe back. Ian _thwacks_ away like his only plan for revenge is to mess with this guy’s landscape.

There’s a long shadow in the back of the room, and for a moment Mickey thinks someone’s been watching him. But the shape is too tall for that. He peers closer to get a better look, cupping his hands against the glass to see…

Mickey blinks.

He turns, stares at Ian.

“You fucking didn’t.”

Ian angles his head further away from Mickey. He takes another swing at the tree trunk.

“You fucking asshole. I drove all this way so you could chop down a fucking _Christmas tree?_ ”

Ian finally meets his eye, hoisting the axe over his shoulder and wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “Debbie and Carl wanted a real Christmas this year. And with Frank in the hospital…” he trails off, looking towards the ground pathetically. Overdoing it, really. He may as well have said _‘think of the poor children.’_

“How in the hell is that my problem?”

Ian shrugs. “I needed a van. I can’t really carry this thing back on the El.”

“What, your new sugar daddy couldn’t drive it back for you? Wouldn’t fit in his overcompensating Porsche?”

Ian furrows his brow. “What?”

Mickey gestures at the house behind him. “The guy who lives here.”

“I don’t know these people.”

“You’re not fucking him?”

Ian stares at him like he’s slightly slow. “Of course not, I’m fucking you.”

“Oh.” Mickey looks away from Ian’s earnest eyes, searching for something else to fixate on. “That’s a shit tree, you know. The branches are all uneven.”

“Fuck you,” Ian huffs out, the corners of his lips twitching upward. “It’s tall, that’s all they care about.”

“You could’ve chosen a night that’s not fucking freezing. Can’t we come back tomorrow night?”

“It’s Christmas Eve, Mickey.”

They lapse into silence, with Ian whacking away inexpertly and Mickey offering the occasional piece of advice that goes unheeded. 

“You should aim higher.”

“You just said aim low—never mind, just shut up. You’re gonna wake up the whole neighborhood.”

“Hang on, if you don’t know these people how’d you know they have the right tree?”

“Didn’t,” Ian gasps, breathing heavily. “Figured we could just drive around until we found one.”

It takes Mickey a minute of pawing around on the ground, but eventually he finds a pinecone heavy enough to hurl at Ian’s head.

“Ow, fuck!”

“You’re paying me back for gas, dickwad. Should’ve brought one of Iggy’s other axes.”

“What, so we could be swinging large, sharp instruments at each other?” Ian asks disgruntledly, still massaging the back of his head.

“Seems like a fucking awesome idea right about now.”

With one last violent _thwack_ the entire tree seems to shudder and creak until…

It tilts a bit and then stops, standing firm at a forty five degree angle.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Ian exclaims, and puts his foot above the break and pushes. Grinning, Mickey leans in to help, and together they manage to get the tree to the ground. Mickey picks the axe up from where Ian dropped it and hacks away until it’s fully free.

“You’re sorta shit at this,” Mickey says, more cheerful now that Ian’s smugness has been wiped out. 

“Yeah well, you can do it next year then.”

Why Ian thinks he would ever do this again Mickey isn’t sure, but it catches him off guard enough that he winds up helping Ian lug the tree back into the trunk of his van without a word. It doesn’t fit, exactly, but Iggy’s got some left over rope that Ian doesn’t ask the origins of and they manage to secure it well enough.

They don’t talk much on the way back, with the exception of Ian muttering ‘I got it, I got it,’ when Mickey stops pointedly at the nearest gas station.

By some miracle, or else carbon monoxide poisoning, they get the tree into the Gallagher house without waking anyone up. It won’t stand straight, so they prop it up against the wall and a couch. It looks fairly pathetic, but Ian steps back and surveys it proudly. 

“We did it,” he says, flashing Mickey a blinding grin. Mickey glances away quickly to cover his own smile. The gifts littering the floor are small and shoddily wrapped, but there’s more than Mickey’s ever seen on Christmas. 

“Almost forgot,” Ian says, digging through the gifts. He thrusts a large, lumpy package, wrapped in old newspaper at him. 

“The fuck is this?” 

Ian rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s a Christmas gift. Open it.”

Mickey looks at him suspiciously, but rips the paper open anyway. A dark blue hoodie falls out, thicker than the threadbare one he has now. 

“It’s not new, but it doesn’t smell or anything.” Mickey doesn’t answer, and Ian adds, “You looked cold.” 

“I don’t need your fucking charity,” Mickey says, his voice raspy.

“It’s not charity, it’s a Christmas gift.” He says it like it’s obvious, and it is for him. His yard is decorated with Christmas lights, even if every third one is dead. There are presents meticulously wrapped from all his siblings, fresh cookies in the kitchen and stockings with holes in them over the fireplace. 

“Don’t expect me to get you anything,” Mickey says at length.

Ian smiles, relieved. “You got me the tree.”

Mickey finally looks up from studying the hoodie to stare at him incredulously. “I didn’t get you the fucking tree, you tricked me into going out there you asshole.”

“Merry Christmas, Mickey,” Ian interrupts. He’s smiling that sweet, shy smile that makes Mickey alternately want to stab out his eyes and fuck him senseless. For a moment it looks like he’s going to kiss him, and Mickey has a horrifying vision of mistletoe hanging over them, but the moment passes. 

“Come over for dinner tomorrow, there’ll be so many people here no one will notice,” he says instead.

“Yeah, whatever,” Mickey says. They both know he won’t.

“Right, well. Thanks.” 

Mickey nods, and Ian starts walking towards the stairs. 

The sweatshirt is soft under his fingers, the lining thick and warm. There’s a tag on the back with the price marked out in black sharpie. Mickey can see Ian buying it, saving up his money from the Kash and Grab, digging through old papers to wrap it with, sticking it in with the other gifts for his family. His chest constricts oddly.

“Hey,” Mickey says. Ian turns, something hopeful and wary in his eyes. 

Mickey strides over to the staircase, cups the back of his neck and kisses him. He tastes of pine and smoke and something soft and familiar Mickey can never identify. 

“Merry Christmas, or whatever.”

He'll never admit it, but with his gift in hand, the axe on the passenger seat and Ian's breath in his mouth, Mickey finds he's not half as cold on the way home as he was before. 

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas/happy holidays to all you beautiful shameless fans!


End file.
